DavidTheMavin

Seems like the majority of people here use AWeber as their newsletter solution. What makes it better than Constant Contact or vice versa?

NakMuay

Have never tried Constant Contact, and have never had a reason to stop using AWeber.

DavidTheMavin

Hmm, looks like CC wins out because Aweber doesn't have a business partner program where you can have multiple accounts under one main account. So under Aweber you need to create a whole new account and new login etc for every site you run.

jacktackett

David,
check out iContact - they have a program similar to what you described. Its called an agency account and will let you have multiple accounts under your main account. I believe you can brand the main account (any account actually) with your information.
best,
--Jack

danhughes

Apparently Cary NC is the home of email advice tonight

We recently switched from Aweber to mailchimp. Aweber has no API access and iContact's seems to be an after thought.

Depending on how you use it, API access allows you complete access to all your data as well as list management (adding, updating, unsubscribing).

API access has allowed us to create some extremely cool analytics that go way beyond open rate and ctr.

iw433

profollow.com has multiple accounts, all of the old features of Aweber including the price, $20.00 a month Profollow is a private label of Aweber with better features. Support is handled by Aweber. Not an affiliate, just a happy camper.

nzdealer

Aweber is super great and you can have multiple list and send multiple emails to your users. I would go with aweber or set up my autoresponder.

DavidTheMavin

Ok, what I've found out is pretty crazy so I thought I'd share:
iContact: $99 setup fee, $99/month then $3 per 1k sent- Setup in 24-48 hours
Constant Contact: Haven't heard back yet, but I think it takes a while to setup
ProFollow: $19.95/month - that's it! or even $179.40/year

They all do the same things, but profollow only allows you to add 2k addresses a day from an existing list.

I think it's a clear choice for my personal circumstances and thanks again to everyone who gave me the 411!

Brian W. Wang

Never heard of Constant Contact before, will check it out. In my experience, Aweber is really the best autoresponder out there, and is the best for this function.

I've heard not too bad thing about Getresponse, but Aweber is unmatched when it comes to going through spam filters and deliverability rates.

GarrieWilson

No you don't. They call them "campaigns"

DavidTheMavin

Right, same but different. We're not going to need to give anyone access to the different sub accounts anyway, so it's a non issue with using Aweber.

The only downside I see to the profollow.com deal is that you can only add 2k email addy's a day, which doesn't really matter all that much. And you can't customize your email confirmation message. I'm waiting on an example of wha... oh wait just got the example of what it will look like and it got spam filtered! Oh well, it's a standard, non html email with a link to profollower, guess I need to find out if it will always go to them for confirmation

DavidTheMavin

Another couple of advantages to iContact is that you can have a "Forward to a Friend" button in the footer, along with some social b-marking links, and you can create an iContact "community" where your newsletters will also reside (on their domain).

Just fyi.

polypro

Does anyone have any experience with icontact in terms of their deliverability

Is it single opt in or double opt in for web based leads?

AzlanR2

I do tried Constant Contact. For Free Trial Only. Well, Aweber is 80% better than that. For one thing is that CC won't allow mailing list related to affiliate marketing, make money and financial independence. Then, Aweber is much easier to use compared to its competitors.

SEOsly

I couldn't agree with this more. I also just recently switched from Aweber to mailchimp and just as Dan has said the API support makes all the difference.

I'm still fairly new to the service, but I'll be sure to check back in here and let you know how things go over the next few weeks.

polypro

I have to say I lover mailchimp's honesty

Just read this from their website - they even recommend their competitors in certain circumstances - never seen this before

Compare Us | MailChimp.com

DavidTheMavin

Yeah, that helps people make their decisions much easier. One thing I was looking for was as much of a white label service as possible in this instance:

You Can't "White Label" MailChimp.

If you want a 100% white label, re-brandable email service provider, that's not MailChimp. We've built MailChimp so that if you're a freelancer or designer, you can setup multiple lists for each of your clients, and then you manage everything on their behalf. You focus on your clients, we focus on building awesome features your clients want. In all honesty, we actually recommend that you setup completely separate MailChimp accounts for each of your clients, and charge them for setup, training, template design, etc. Because inevitably, you will want to---ahem---"set them free." There's even a super-powerful MailChimp API, where you can build your own private-label products that sync with MailChimp (and charge whatever you want for it). But some people still need a full white label solution. If so, you should definitely try CampaignMonitor, because that's their specialty.

Bobb30

I love AWeber. If any other company is trying to get into that
marketplace, AWeber would be a tough nut to crack.

Most of their customers, I think, would agree that "If it ain't broke, don't
fix it."

polypro

Aweber may be good - but having looked at mailchimp for the last couple of days - its a refreshing approach and very powerful

However its not for everyone and even they admit that - especially for first time users or those who don't have experience setting up a list

I am not sure about their deliverability but overall the methodology seems quite impressive. For example they share information on an ISP by ISP level of open rates, deliberability - not something Aweber even come close to sharing

soamz

Im using awevber. I think,I should switch to iContact now.

InternetYogi

What I would like to see is some discussion on the advanced features .

EG

A/ Click tracking and list segmentation based on whom clicks what links in the mails.

You email and Client A visits page one . Your email tracks that and moves Client A to list 1

Client B visits page two . Your email tracks that and moves Client B to list 2

Client C opens email but does not click links they are moved to list 3

Then your email sends our autoresponders based on the above actions


B/ Send Broadcast email . Track Opens of emails and segment lists based on opening . So you can re email unopens with another subject line .

Or any other cool features.

I think that IContact could do the above based on some emails I have received. But would like to hear from users.

mikelively01

I actually use the mailinglist plugin for wordpress. It has an option to get an offsite code for placement in your other websites. It actually lets you use the plugin to manage all of your mailing list through wordpress....
Pretty handy if you ask me!!!!!!

erwindegrave

I never tried Constant Contact.. I believe aweber is credible enough because most internet marketers use it. Knowing that aweber is still overpopulating the market, I guess it enough as a proof. And in case, constant contact is nice, no doubt, the news will spread through out the internet :-)

john2010

A view of you seemed to be very excited about Mailchimp's API.
I was too till I read their terms of service after @AndyBeard pointed
it out to me.

You should read the TOS.

AFFILIATE MARKETING BANNED!

That means Mailchimp might not be a good choice
for the majority here on this forum.

(Actually I am quite sure that I did not receive a single email
through mailchimp ever. Seems they only allow clients to send
boring direct-do-not-respond messages.)

And of course there is a huge gray zone. When do you stop being
a blogger with a newsletter or a business promoting its services; and
have become an affiliate marketer over night?

It seems that there are only those choices left:
* AWeber (which I personally use and promote; the only one I promote) and various AWeber whitelabels
* iContact
*GetResponse

And autoresponder//shopping cart systems
* 1ShoppingCart
* Infusionshoft

Cheers
Yours
John

cgallagher93

Couldn't say I've ever used or even heard of Constant Contact. What I will say is that I was a member of Aweber for the past six months or so until last week I changed to Get Response.

I switched because I heard of a problem with Aweber delivering auto-reponder mailings and email broadcasts to Gmail addresses and experienced a drop in open rates which would indicate this were true.

On the other hand, Get Response is WAAYYYY more confusing in my opinion. If you're a newbie looking for ease of use, I recommend Aweber. Just beware of the Gmail thing, if it's still applicable that is.

John A Goodwin

I never used Constant Contact but I use AWeber and it's a very good autoresponder service.

Rocketguy

I use to have aweber, but got rid of it because of the stupid double opt in. I have import daily leads an always loose people off the list because of the double opt in. I think I am going to sign up for mailchimp or constant contact.

ravijayagopal

Hi,

I'm a very satisfied Aweber user for many years now (7, I think). Their deliverability is incredible, decent analytics, and it does what I need (which is quite minimal actually).

But I've recently started doing some work with MailChimp, to integrate it with my DAP software, and I'm absolutely blown away by their API. That's one area where Aweber totally sucks. They don't have an API at all.

Say, you have a membership site and you want to add all of your members to your Aweber list, Aweber makes you jump through hoops even to get this basic integration going. Forget about any advanced stuff from external software.

But looks like the MailChimp developers are guys after my own heart - total geeks.

They've built the service on top of API's (and not added API's as an afterthought).

Now, I haven't used MailChimp as a user, and don't know how their deliverability is compared to Aweber.

But if it's anything remotely decent, then I will be moving over to MailChimp over a period of time, no doubt about it. With so many sites and services available these days to run your business, it is ridiculous to not have an API to integrate with your external business software/services.

If Aweber doesn't pick up their game soon, they're eventually going to be irrelevant, if not obsolete.

It's all about the API's, and how you can attract developers to develop services on *top* of your platform. Think AppStore vs Microsoft Phone software.

Whoever can attract the most businesses and services and developers, wins.

My $0.02 :-)

- Ravi Jayagopal

john2010

Hey Ravi,

Yes the Mailchimp API is great, definitely. AWeber has to pay a high price for their paranoia and not trusting its customers.

As I wrote above, what I do not like about Mailchimp is their terms of service banning affiliate marketing. Unless they updated their terms they didn't concisely define the difference between a marketer occasionally promoting affiliate offers and an affiliate marketer.

Yours
John

ravijayagopal

John,

Thanks for that info. Didn't know that about MailChimp's TOS.

I guess I will have to investigate further before I get too excited about them :-)

- Ravi Jayagopal

knowwow

I am appalled by affiliate marketing to be on a list with these other fields:

+ Illegal goods or services
+ Escort and dating services
+ Pharmaceutical products
+ Get-rich-quick or work-at-home schemes
+ Online trading, day trading tips, or stock market related content
+ Gambling services, products or gambling education
+ Multi-level marketing
+ Affiliate marketing *
+ Credit repair, get-out-of-debt content
+ Mortgages and/or Loans
+ Real estate prospecting or listing
+ Nutritional Supplements, Herbal Supplements or Vitamin Supplements
+ Pornography or nudity in content
+ Adult novelty items or references in content

They say they don't question our line of business but that they need to stay out of traditionally-spamming fields. I have been spammed by a list on ecological events and another list on online recruitment too. Plus, ebay does affiliate marketing -of some sort-, mailchimp itself offers an affiliate program...

They say they will shoot anyone getting one spam report out of 1000 emails, so why the restriction by industry? I am shopping now and they could have my business easily although they are far more expensive than the other guys...

Anybody know a service that seamlessly work with Drupal?

renu

David, I'd go with infusionsoft or icontact.
never used them before but the marketplace is full of positive reviews. I still use aweber and it does the job pretty well but as they say, don't put all your eggs in the same basket

Cheers, Remi Vee